This invention relates to continuous speech recognition.
Many speech recognition systems recognize spoken text in one mode and spoken commands in another mode. In one example, the dictation mode requires discrete speech while the command mode may be handled by continuous/discrete speech. In dictation mode, a user's discrete speech is recognized as, e.g., English words, and the recognized words are displayed to the user. The user may dictate any word that is within a vocabulary held in the system without having to follow any particular structure. This is called "free context" discrete speech. In command mode, the system recognizes either continuous or discrete speech and executes the commands. For example, if the user says "underline last three words," the system recognizes the command and then underlines the last three words that the user spoke in dictation mode. The user speaks commands as structured speech in accordance with a particular structure or template. For example, the user may say "underline last three words" but not "underline the last three words" or "please underline last three words." The user switches between command mode and dictation mode by speaking "Command Mode", double clicking on an icon representing the mode the user wants to switch into, or typing a switch mode command.